• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Is it possible to export a photo without external hard drive plugged in?

Status
Not open for further replies.

hbwilliams22

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2019
Messages
83
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version: 11.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
I am traveling and do not have my external hard drive which all of my images are stored on. To my knowledge, without access to the external HD, the images I am seeing in LrC are "smart previews". When I go to Export > Burn Full-Sized JPEGs, the image does not export. Instead, I get the below notification. When selecting "Yes", nothing happens.

So, am I able to export images without the external HD source accessible?

4a40752a-1648-4082-b475-9e63584b7877.jpg
 
To my knowledge, without access to the external HD, the images I am seeing in LrC are "smart previews"
No, the images you are seeing are always normal previews, not smart previews. Smart previews are proxies for your originals, but you have to tell Lightroom to generate them. They are not generated by default.

That is why the dialog says that smart previews will be used, if available. So are they available for the image(s) you want to export?
 
No, the images you are seeing are always normal previews, not smart previews. Smart previews are proxies for your originals, but you have to tell Lightroom to generate them. They are not generated by default.

That is why the dialog says that smart previews will be used, if available. So are they available for the image(s) you want to export?
Ok so if I do want these images exportable what should I be doing? I definitely don't want to consume a bunch of memory on my computer for the safe of exporting images (if that is a concern).
 
You'll need to generate smart previews for the images that you're considering exporting. These are considerably smaller than your raw files, and they are smaller in pixel dimensions. They will take up some disk space. How much space you're willing to devote to them is for you to decide.
 
If you're stuck and don't have the original image availabile, AND CAN LIVE WITH LESS THEN FULL RESOLUTION, but are seeing a preview big enough for the loupe view, you can take a screen shot of the preview in the Loupe view and save the screen shot as a jpg. the screen shot will have the resolution of your screen (not the original image).
 
If you're stuck and don't have the original image availabile, AND CAN LIVE WITH LESS THEN FULL RESOLUTION, but are seeing a preview big enough for the loupe view, you can take a screen shot of the preview in the Loupe view and save the screen shot as a jpg. the screen shot will have the resolution of your screen (not the original image).

OK thanks. This is what I ended up doing. Generally speaking, if I want to export a full sized image, I need to have access to the external drive to do so. I used to use Dropbox as my image source but moved it over to SSD for various reasons. Not sure if that was the best call but it's what I decided to do.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top